Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. All right, back to
Speaker 1: kind of our tech focus this hour, our team around
Speaker 1: the globe and across the United States, continuing to report
Speaker 1: out on some of the big tech events that are
Speaker 1: happening on this Tuesday. Right now, we want to head
Speaker 1: to Google Io. It's Google's annual developer conference. It focuses
Speaker 1: on the company's advancements in AI, Android operating system, smartwatches,
Speaker 1: and it's scam detection tools. And Tim, it's happening right
Speaker 1: now in Mountain View, California.
Speaker 2: That's where we find Bloomberg News technology reporter Jack Devallos
Speaker 2: with Google's Liz Reach.
Speaker 1: He's vice president and head of Search at the firm.
Speaker 1: Hey Jackie, Hey Tim.
Speaker 2: And Carol Liz, it's great to have you today.
Speaker 3: A pleasure to be with you here today.
Speaker 2: The big news that came out of that keynote speech
Speaker 2: was really AI Mode. It's what everyone was really hoping
Speaker 2: to get an insight into what's next for search, and
Speaker 2: you called it the most powerful search and Geniette described
Speaker 2: to us why this is a total reimagining of the
Speaker 2: search experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've seen with aio reviews that it's
Speaker 3: been really great for people, enabling them to ask new
Speaker 3: types of questions. But we also saw that people really
Speaker 3: wanted to say sometimes they have those hard questions, they
Speaker 3: want to go directly to an AI powered response. They
Speaker 3: wanted to ask follow up questions because they're trying to
Speaker 3: do something in more depth in research, and so we
Speaker 3: really thought about what does that experience look like for people,
Speaker 3: and how do we bring it in so that they
Speaker 3: can ask truly their hardest questions and then continue to
Speaker 3: explore and take action throughout the web.
Speaker 2: So is this the end of the blue links?
Speaker 3: No, absolutely not. I think both within aiover reviews and
Speaker 3: within AI mode, AI is actually allowing us to go
Speaker 3: deeper into search. It's allowing people to find that hyper relevant,
Speaker 3: incredibly fresh content that really matches your need. If you
Speaker 3: think about it, if you are doing more of sort
Speaker 3: of a keywordy style, you only gave a few words.
Speaker 3: You didn't really describe what the particular type of shoes
Speaker 3: you want are. And you saw with the shopping example today, Okay,
Speaker 3: if you're really describing this is the type of rug
Speaker 3: I want to buy, can you find that great small
Speaker 3: merchant that sells the perfect rug for you, and so
Speaker 3: I think that will continue to thrive going forward.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest questions is really around search has
Speaker 2: really come up around do I use one of these
Speaker 2: other chatbots open ai for example, or Meta whatever's out
Speaker 2: there these days, to kind of ask it these questions
Speaker 2: in the same way that I used to use Google
Speaker 2: Search for when it comes to Google's products, why do
Speaker 2: you want users? Do you prefer to have users go
Speaker 2: through the Gemini app or to search? Kind of what's
Speaker 2: the unique benefit of going to search in the case
Speaker 2: for more specific and more complex questions. I think search
Speaker 2: is really designed around helping you with your information needs.
Speaker 2: It's tuned to really think about things like accuracy and factuality. Oftentimes,
Speaker 2: when you have these information needs, you want to get started,
Speaker 2: but then you want to go deeper and research more.
Speaker 3: Let's say you're looking for camps. You want some good
Speaker 3: idea for camps, but we actually want to check out
Speaker 3: the camp sitans, right, and so search is really designed
Speaker 3: to make those questions possible and really focused on doing
Speaker 3: the best job possible when you have questions with really
Speaker 3: at information focus.
Speaker 2: You mentioned accuracy, and Google had some issues with accuracy
Speaker 2: kind of in the more early days of this technology.
Speaker 2: How did you know that AI mode was ready for
Speaker 2: prime time?
Speaker 3: So we have quite thorough testing that we do constantly.
Speaker 3: We have the feedback from the users in the Labs product,
Speaker 3: but also put it through extensive testing around the factuality,
Speaker 3: around the helpfulness of the product, and really seeing that
Speaker 3: both from our benchmarks as well as from the user feedback,
Speaker 3: we believe it is ready.
Speaker 2: The agent kind of aspect to artificial intelligence is something
Speaker 2: that everyone is really curious about when it comes to search.
Speaker 2: What do agents mean in that context? Is it going
Speaker 2: to be kind of us feeding information into search or
Speaker 2: kind of it doing it for us in the long run.
Speaker 3: I think maybe a couple of things to highlight, and
Speaker 3: we talked about how we're bringing Project Mariner in today
Speaker 3: to search. On those cases. For instance, you're trying to
Speaker 3: buy baseball tickets, you would have to go to hundreds
Speaker 3: of different sites enter in the same day the same
Speaker 3: number of tickets and go look at them, and we
Speaker 3: can go off and help pull that information together and
Speaker 3: then allow you to take action. But I think this
Speaker 3: is an important part of agents is agents should be
Speaker 3: taking the drudgery out of the work for you. That's
Speaker 3: how we think about in search, but still keeping you
Speaker 3: in control. Right, So what's the part of the task
Speaker 3: you don't want to do, but then coming back and saying, well,
Speaker 3: which of these do you want? Right? I think if
Speaker 3: you're trying to pick tickets or you're trying to buy
Speaker 3: a great purse, both of those, at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, you probably still want to sign off on
Speaker 3: that final choice. And so we're really thinking about the
Speaker 3: role of both reducing the effort but enabling you the
Speaker 3: agency to participate.
Speaker 2: I'm hearing a lot about engagement, so users are going
Speaker 2: to be using this in a different way, possibly for
Speaker 2: law longer and more efficiently. Earlier this year, an Apple
Speaker 2: executives said that the number of Google searches in the
Speaker 2: Safari browser was starting to take down. Do you expect
Speaker 2: that AI mode could actually reverse that trend?
Speaker 3: So, as we stated, overall search queries are up, including
Speaker 3: on the Apple platforms. But I think you also heard
Speaker 3: from Sender today aioverviews has driven an increase in queries
Speaker 3: already today. I think we expect with AI mode that
Speaker 3: will happen as well. It's really an expansionary moment. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of questions that you might think about in
Speaker 3: your head, but you didn't historically think it was worth
Speaker 3: the time or effort to go ask them. And as
Speaker 3: technology unlocks this, we saw this with aio reviews. People
Speaker 3: just come and they asked that question that used to
Speaker 3: pop in their head, and they would let go and
Speaker 3: do that. And so we really expect the space to
Speaker 3: grow over time.
Speaker 2: One of the areas that I know publishers and content
Speaker 2: creators are really curious about is kind of what the
Speaker 2: longer term impact of aioverviews is on them. Can you
Speaker 2: kind of break down how you expect AI mode kind
Speaker 2: of largely available to affect that cohort.
Speaker 3: So I would say two things we saw with aioverviews
Speaker 3: that pages with aioverviews drive higher quality clicks to websites,
Speaker 3: which means people spend more time on them, they're really
Speaker 3: engaged on them, So it's a good thing for publishers.
Speaker 3: So I think that's a great thing of getting really
Speaker 3: high quality content, and we are looking forward to doing
Speaker 3: the same thing with AI mode as well. I think
Speaker 3: we're going to continue to find deeper parts of the
Speaker 3: web that really incredible, hyper relevant content. But I would
Speaker 3: also say I still expect the vast majority of people
Speaker 3: to interact primarily on the main search experience with aioverviews.
Speaker 3: AI mode is really for those harder tasks. It's for
Speaker 3: the subset of people that really want to be on
Speaker 3: that sort of cutting edge frontier of models. But AIO
Speaker 3: reviews and the main search page continues to be a
Speaker 3: great place for a lot of your questions. When it
Speaker 3: comes to antitrust, it's on our viewer's minds. We're Bloomberg
Speaker 3: and we're really focused on what those implications could be
Speaker 3: on the broader business model. Judge last year ruled that
Speaker 3: Google's dominance in search was an illegal monopoly, and of
Speaker 3: course the outcome of that is still really yet to
Speaker 3: be seen. But for you in your shoes as head
Speaker 3: of search, how are you thinking about the effect that
Speaker 3: could have.
Speaker 2: On your roadmap?
Speaker 3: So in general, we stay just focused on building the
Speaker 3: best thing for our users. People continue to choose Google
Speaker 3: because they find it helpful, not because they have to,
Speaker 3: and that is really our north star and has been
Speaker 3: for years. You go back to that mission of organizing
Speaker 3: all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Speaker 3: We're a long ways away from the end of that right, Yes,
Speaker 3: we've come a long way in the last twenty five years,
Speaker 3: but there's still so many opportunities to make information more useful.
Speaker 3: We talk today about how we think the future of
Speaker 3: search is going beyond information to intelligence, really helping you
Speaker 3: in a deep way with your needs, and that's that's
Speaker 3: what gets us motivated every day.
Speaker 2: So you don't see the outcome of that antitrust trial
Speaker 2: kind of affecting your strategy in search going forward or
Speaker 2: slowing it down in any way.
Speaker 3: So we don't generally comment on pending legislation, but I
Speaker 3: think in general we'll continue to try and build amazing
Speaker 3: products for users that people love, just as we have
Speaker 3: over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 2: Liz Rae, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining having me Carol